Amusing Problems
Maggie
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Romance fills the air when Dr. J's son, J. Jr., brings his new girlfriend home from college. What a girl - a physicist's dream! She is doing graduate research in magnetism and she lets it affect her whole life. She drives a car with mag wheels. She graduated from school magna cum laude. She is Polish, very attractive, and J. Jr. thinks she is magnificent! Her name, of course, is Maggie. J. Jr. is talking marriage, but Dr. J offers his advice: "Beware," says Dr. J, "a woman like that can turn around and become just as repulsive as she is attractive. Besides," he continues, "they rule with a strong left hand!" Fortunately for J. Jr., he discovers for himself that she isn't his dream girl after all. He notices that her work comes first and everything else second. When she asks J. Jr. to go with her to mass, he thinks she means church, but instead he winds up sitting in a lab while she plays with a mass spectrograph. The conversation goes like this:
J. Jr.:
"Maggie, I fear that potentially there could be a difference between us."
Maggie:
"Huh? Oh yes, I set it at 7000 volts."
J. Jr.:
"No, no - don't you feel anything between us anymore?"
Maggie:
"Field? Oh yes, it is 12,000 Gauss."
J. Jr.:
"Don't you get a charge out of being with me?"
Maggie:
"Charge? Why, 1.6 x 10-19 coulombs, of course."
J. Jr.:
"Maggie, I think we've drifted too far apart."
Maggie:
"Apart? Let's see - the radius is 12.5 cm.
Would you compute the mass, dear, and look up what element that is?" With that, J. Jr. walks out in disgust, never to see Maggie again, though he does look at tables periodically.
What is the mass of the element that eventually came between J. Jr. and Maggie?
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